Tex: A Chapter in the Life of Alexander Teixeira De Mattos

In the swirl of early 20th-century literary London, one of the era's most celebrated translators finally gets his due. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos brought French, German, and Dutch masterpieces to English readers with virtuosity, yet his real genius lay in something harder to translate: the art of friendship. Stephen McKenna, writing as both chronicler and confidant, paints a portrait that refuses hagiography. Here is a man aware of his own gifts yet perpetually amused by them, a translator who could render Zola into English but remained helpless before a Dutch railway timetable. The narrative weaves through literary salons, wartime London, and the quiet heroism of a man whose body failed him repeatedly yet whose spirit remained irrepressibly comic. This is biography as love letter, written by someone who knew that the best tribute to a friend is not reverence but remembrance.